The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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8 THE WOLVERINE APRIL 2018 This is the stuff you dream about. You see Trey Burke hit a crazy shot like this, in the Kansas game. You see game-winners all the time. This is what March is for. — Freshman Jordan Poole, after his NCAA game-winner against Houston T his is March, all right. And Michigan's heave-and-hope dive into the Sweet 16 in- volved the most delicious sort of madness. The Wolverines stood two free throw makes away — by a player who'd knocked down 9 of 10 at that point — from packing their bags and calling it a very good season. But Houston's Devin Davis missed, unleashing the sort of in- sanity annually making the NCAA Tournament an excruciatingly capti- vating drama. The Wolverines still needed to find a way, down two with 3.6 seconds remaining. Enter baseball player Isaiah Livers, a freshman for- ward, firing a strike near midcourt to senior guard Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. Abdur-Rahkman missed a layup for the tie seconds earlier, sensing an it's over chill flash through his body for an instant. He fought it off, vow- ing internally to fight to the end. Now he fought off a double-team, firing to the right wing for a rookie with the chutzpah of a hedgehog taunting a pack of lions. Poole caught it, launched himself into a spread-legged leap, somehow barely missing the 10 outstretched fingers of Houston's Corey Davis Jr. Boom. A 30-foot, all-net lightning bolt dropped the Cougars into horizon- tal lifelessness on the hardwood. The same shot reanimated the Wol- verines, who chased Poole in a mad- ness-frenzied dash around the court, unrestrained joy commandeering their faces. "I can't breathe," redshirt sopho- more guard Charles Matthews heaved after Michigan's 64-63 stun- ner. "I chased that dude all over the court!" The Wolverines chased another game in a stellar season, and found it. They made a second straight Sweet 16, on a net-seeking ICBM from a rookie who played pre- cisely 11 minutes in the gut-grinder against the Cougars. Poole entered the winning locker room and traded huge grins and slight shoves with junior forward Moe Wagner, who regularly identi- fies the freshman's mega-swag. "This is what I'm saying — he's never going to shut up now," Wag- ner beamed. "It's show time!" Livers, Poole's classmate and good buddy, readily accepted the unmitigated swagger to come in exchange for a trip to Los Angeles in the West Regional. "I'm never going to hear the end of it, but I'm never going to stop telling about it," Livers assured. "I'm like, 'Bro, you really just hit the shot to go to the Sweet 16 in L.A. You barely played. I mean, you played some of the game, but you barely played. How do you get up and just hit a 35-footer like that?' That's crazy." Houston thought so, too. For every crazed, euphoric, hu- man dogpile in an NCAA shining moment, there's The Big Dance ver- sion of death. The Cougars experi- enced it. "If that ball had hit the rim some- where, Houston would be getting on the plane next week, flying to Los Angeles," Houston head coach Kelvin Sampson said quietly. "Michigan would be giving their press conference second. That's how fine the line is between winning and losing. "The kid made a helluva shot. He really did." It's not the first time, Michigan head coach John Beilein stressed. Just the most immortalized. "We scrimmaged last Friday," Beilein recalled. "He hit a half- court shot in the scrimmage, at the buzzer, and then they were down two and he won the game with a three-pointer at the buzzer as well. That's what he does. He's got a lot of confidence — and he'll tell you about it, too." The Wolverines are telling the na- tion about the Big Ten's best team in 2017-18. They did it by twice beating the popular preseason national cham- pions, Michigan State, including one in East Lansing. They did it by winning the Big Ten Tournament championship. They did it through the toughest Big Ten strength of schedule, while the Spartans played the 13th-most rigorous slate in the league. Michigan underscored its strength by winning five games against the others in the Big Ten's top five, including four away from Crisler Center, while MSU won two — both at home. Still, the NCAA essentially handed MSU two home games to begin The Big Dance, before 17,000 or so Spartan fans in Detroit, while shooing the Wolverines off to Wich- ita for post-midnight finishes. The Spartans came away with a short, sad bus trip home. The Wol- verines prepped to fly to the coast, still living the dream. ❏ Editor John Borton has been with The Wolverine since 1991. Contact him at jborton@thewolverine.com and follow him on Twitter @JB _ Wolverine. WOLVERINE WATCH JOHN BORTON U-M Hits Epicenter Of The Madness Rookie Jordan Poole's (right) three-pointer as time expired gave the Wolverines a 64-63 win over Houston and a Sweet 16 berth. PHOTO BY LON HORWEDEL